Bristlebots in swarm robotics - new approaches in modeling and agent development

Bristlebots are vibration-driven mobile robots. They are characterized by small size, high speed, simple design and low costs of production and application, which are ad- vantageous qualities for agents of swarm robotic systems. In this paper, new ap- proaches in modeling and development of swarm agents are given. It is shown that a simple mass point model can be used to simulate the motion behavior of a bristlebot as complex as necessary for swarm studies. A robot prototype is presented, which has on-board everything needed as a robotic agent. The results of simulations and exper-iments are presented and compared

Análisis del estado actual de los costos que están siendo utilizados por las Mipymes del municipio de orencia, para determinar los precios de sus productos y /o servicios

Los costos son un factor de incidencia directa en la toma de decisiones de las organizaciones y últimamente están sometidos a cambios motivados por los diferentes acontecimientos históricos como son: la globalización e internacionalización de los mercados, la creciente incertidumbre del entorno, la competencia y la diversidad de productos ofrecidos en el mercado y que inuyen en su control y medición. El presente documento busca dar respuesta a los siguientes interrogantes: ¿cuál es la problemática que sobre los costos están teniendo los empresarios? y ¿cuáles son las metodologías de costos que están siendo utilizadas en las micro, pequeñas y medianas empresas?. En este articulo se expone la situación actual de las Micro, pequeñas y medianas empresas del municipio de Florencia en lo relativo al manejo de la información de costos, para determinar los principales factores que inuyen en su deciente manejo y control, a n de establecer de acuerdo con su actividad económica, cuáles son sus necesidades de información requeridas, con el n de hacerlas competitivas y que puedan ejercer controles adecuados para el manejo y acceso a una información conable, útil, comprensible y comparable como lo estipula el Decreto 2649/93, el cual establece claramente cuáles son las cualidades de la información contable

Distinctions between bipolar and unipolar depression

This is a review of the studies comparing unipolar and bipolar depression, with focus on the course, symptomatology, neurobiology, and psychosocial literatures. These are reviewed with one question in mind: does the evidence support diagnosing bipolar and unipolar depressions as the same disorder or different? The current nomenclature of bipolar and unipolar disorders has resulted in research that compares these disorders as a whole, without considering depression separately from mania within bipolar disorder. Future research should investigate two broad categories of depression and mania as separate disease processes that are highly comorbid.W niniejszym artykule opisano prace porównujące depresję w chorobie afektywnej jedno- i dwubiegunowej, z uwzględnieniem przebiegu, symptomatologii, neurobiologii oraz aspektów psychospołecznych. Wymienione czynniki oceniano pod kątem: czy istnieją dowody potwierdzające rozpoznawanie depresji w chorobie afektywnej jednobiegunowej i dwubiegunowej jako tego samego schorzenia, czy może jako odrębnej jednostki chorobowej? Aktualne nazewnictwo choroby afektywnej jednobiegunowej oraz dwubiegunowej zostało zastosowane w opisie badań, które porównują te jednostki w całości, bez oceniania osobno depresji i manii w chorobie afektywnej dwubiegunowej. W przyszłych badaniach powinno się oceniać dwie główne kategorie: depresję oraz manię jako odrębne procesy chorobowe, mające wysokie ryzyko współwystępowania

Persistent behavioral sensitization to chronic L-DOPA requires A2A adenosine receptors

To investigate the role of A2A adenosine receptors in adaptive responses to chronic intermittent dopamine receptor stimulation, we compared the behavioral sensitization elicited by repeated L-DOPA treatment in hemiparkinsonian wild-type (WT) and A2A adenosine receptor knock-out (A2A KO) mice. Although the unilateral nigrostriatal lesion produced by intrastriatal injection of 6-hydroxydopamine was indistinguishable between WT and A2A KO mice, they developed strikingly different patterns of behavioral sensitization after daily treatment with low doses of L-DOPA for 3 weeks. WT mice initially displayed modest contralateral rotational responses and then developed progressively greater responses that reached a maximum within 1 week and persisted for the duration of the treatment. In contrast, any rotational behavioral sensitization in A2A KO mice was transient and completely reversed within 2 weeks. Similarly, the time to reach the peak rotation was progressively shortened in WT mice but remained unchanged in A2A KO mice. Furthermore, daily L-DOPA treatment produced gradually sensitized grooming in WT mice but failed to induce any sensitized grooming in A2A KO mice. Finally, repeated L-DOPA treatment reversed the 6-OHDA-induced reduction of striatal dynorphin mRNA in WT but not A2A KO mice, raising the possibility that the A2A receptor may contribute to L-DOPA-induced behavioral sensitization by facilitating adaptations within the dynorphin-expressing striatonigral pathway. Together these results demonstrate that the A2A receptor plays a critical role in the development and particularly the persistence of behavioral sensitization to repeated L-DOPA treatment. Furthermore, they raise the possibility that the maladaptive dyskinetic responses to chronic L-DOPA treatment in Parkinson's disease may be attenuated by A2A receptor inactivation.Peer Reviewe

Assisted protein folding at low temperature: evolutionaryadaptation of the Antarctic fish chaperonin CCT and its clientproteins

Eukaryotic ectotherms of the Southern Ocean face energetic challenges to protein folding assisted by the cytosolic chaperonin CCT. We hypothesize that CCT and its client proteins (CPs) have co-evolved molecular adaptations that facilitate CCT–CP interaction and the ATP-driven folding cycle at low temperature. To test this hypothesis, we compared the functional and structural properties of CCT–CP systems from testis tissues of an Antarctic fish, Gobionotothen gibberifrons (Lo¨nnberg) (habitat/body T=-1.9 to +2˚C), and of the cow (body T=37˚C). We examined the temperature dependence of the binding of denatured CPs (bactin, b-tubulin) by fish and bovine CCTs, both in homologous and heterologous combinations and at temperatures between 24˚C and 20˚C, in a buffer conducive to binding of the denatured CP to the open conformation of CCT. In homologous combination, the percentage of G. gibberifrons CCT bound to CP declined linearly with increasing temperature, whereas the converse was true for bovine CCT. Binding of CCT to heterologous CPs was low, irrespective of temperature. When reactions were supplemented with ATP, G. gibberifrons CCT catalyzed the folding and release of actin at 2˚C. The ATPase activity of apo-CCT from G. gibberifrons at 4˚C was, 2.5-fold greater than that of apo-bovine CCT, whereas equivalent activities were observed at 20˚C. Based on these results, we conclude that the catalytic folding cycle of CCT from Antarctic fishes is partially compensated at their habitat temperature, probably by means of enhanced CP-binding affinity and increased flexibility of the CCT subunits

Ideal cardiovascular health, handgrip strength, and muscle mass among college students: The fuprecol adults study

The American Heart Association established the 2020 Strategic Impact Goals to define the concept of ideal cardiovascular health (CVH) and the metrics needed to monitor it across populations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between handgrip strength, muscle mass, and ideal CVH among Colombian college students. Data from 1,835 college students were analyzed (1,128 female). Muscular strength was estimated using a hand-held dynamometer and normalized to body mass (normalized grip strength [NGS]). The percentage of body fat was determined for bioelectrical impedance analysis using tetrapolar whole-body impedance. Ideal CVH was defined as meeting the ideal levels of 4 behaviors (smoking, body mass index, physical activity, and diet adherence) and 3 factors (total cholesterol, fasting glucose, and blood pressure). Higher levels of NGS and muscle mass (relative to body mass) were associated with a higher number of ideal CVH metrics in both sexes (p for trend less than 0.001). For the total ideal CVH metrics scored on a continuous scale from 0 (all 7 poor) to 7 (all 7 ideal), a 1-metric increase was associated with reduced odds of weak NGS (33 and 36%) and low-medium muscle mass (28 and 34%) mass in men and women, respectively (all p less than 0.001). This study indicates that in Colombian college students, both handgrip strength and muscle mass are positively associated with the ideal CVH metrics. To reduce the possible future public health burden of muscular weakness, health professionals need to encourage the public to optimize lifestyle-related risk factors during the young adult stage. © 2019 National Strength and Conditioning Association

The role of coparents in african american single-mother families: The indirect effect of coparent identity on youth psychosocial adjustment.

The majority (67%) of African American youth live in single-parent households, a shift in the family structure that has been linked to increased risk for both internalizing and externalizing problems behaviors. Although the majority of single mothers endorse the assistance of another adult or family member in childrearing, relatively little is known about who is engaged in this non-marital coparenting role (i.e., grandmother, father/social father, aunt, and female family friend) and how it relates to coparenting quality, maternal parenting, and youth psychosocial outcomes (i.e., internalizing and externalizing problems). This question, which is critical to the advancement of family-focused programming for youth in these families, is addressed in this study. The participants examined in the current study were 159 African American single-mother child dyads. Adolescents' maternal grandmothers constituted the largest proportion of coparents in the sample (37.2%), followed by the mothers' female family friends (22.5%), adolescents' maternal aunts (12.7%), and adolescents' fathers/social fathers (11%). Differences emerged among groups of coparents in support and conflict with the mother. Specifically, grandmothers, aunts, and female family friends provided significantly more instrumental support than fathers. Furthermore, grandmothers and fathers had more conflict with the mother, both generally and specifically in front of the child, than aunts or female family friends. In turn, these differences were associated directly and indirectly through maternal parenting with internalizing and externalizing problems. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed

Annotations for Rule-Based Models

The chapter reviews the syntax to store machine-readable annotations and describes the mapping between rule-based modelling entities (e.g., agents and rules) and these annotations. In particular, we review an annotation framework and the associated guidelines for annotating rule-based models of molecular interactions, encoded in the commonly used Kappa and BioNetGen languages, and present prototypes that can be used to extract and query the annotations. An ontology is used to annotate models and facilitate their description